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If Donald Trump's plans in office include overhauling the decades old US policy on Taiwan as some worry. Beijing's response could be to speed up the military build up, that has coincided with the recent, more assertive position on the disputed South China sea. Arshad Mohammed is on the story.

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>> If president elect Trump continues to kind of raise the Taiwan issue with China, even if he doesn't take hard actions. In that case, some of the analysts that we talked to thought that for example the Chinese could increase their military budgets even more than they are already planning to.

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They could start investing in more military equipment.>> We wanna start winning again.>> Trump rattled the world and rankled China by taking a call from Taiwan's leader and suggesting the decades old One China Policy US presidents have followed, could be in play when he takes office.>> Questioning that policy for the Chinese is terrifying.

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They see that as one of their core interests, Taiwan from their point of view is absolutely a part of China. It's theirs, they're gonna get it back eventually, and they are horrified at the thought that the United States might be backing away from that stance.>> Experts telling Reuters increased spending by China on its military now seems likely, and it could put an emphasis on gaining the amphibious capabilities to actually invade the island of Taiwan.

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>> They may not actually ever do that, they may not actually wanna do that. But that could be a way of showing, hey, we're very serious about this, we view Taiwan as ours, and we're gonna acquire the capabilities to seize it if we want to.>> In any case, most experts say China can be expected to assert itself in the region, as newly obtained satellite photos show it is doing already, with a military build up on artificial islands in the South China Sea.